Business digital transformation programs are the integration of people, data, and technologies to reimagine how work is accomplished. You might apply digital transformation to create new modes for businesses and customers to interact via mobile applications or apply AI to anticipate a fast-food drive-thru customer’s order or apply validation algorithms to accurately book accounting journal entries.
Technology and data are a huge component of digital transformation — but people are the element that ensures success via solution adoption. People — employees and customers — must accept the new work product: this creates a digital culture.
And that led me to experiment with the category of software — Work OS tools and to better understand why customers are gravitating to the technology.
A bit of summarized vendor background Work OS tools include Airtable, Asana, monday.com, Notion, and Wrike. The tools support project planning, organizing task lists and documents, building database tables with multiple view/filter options, and building dashboards with alerts. The tools have a rich set of APIs that integrate with Slack, Google Workspace, Salesforce, and Zapier, as a few examples. The tools are a no-code / low-code platform, just building blocks to allow tech-savvy users to create their own solutions.
Good, useful features, but these are “things”. You don’t go to the hardware store looking for a drill, you shop because you have a goal to install a bookshelf; the drill just facilitates the task.
Here are some different perspectives. The five threads.
Creating workflows and sustainable processes: In the simplest of words, this is how work gets done. Workflows are the series of steps from start to finish required to deliver a work product. A workflow could describe the manufacturing process to build a pair of eyeglasses; a workflow could describe the information flow to onboard a new employee; a workflow could describe the system steps to create the monthly financial forecast. Workflows cut across teams or functional departments. The organization matures when workflows are codified and they become predictable and repeatable.
Knowledge sharing and everyone is a knowledge worker: Knowledge and information are vital assets needed across the organization. As workflows are defined institution knowledge must be inserted into the process. Equally important, as workers execute the workflow and find improvement opportunities, the concepts must be centrally documented. Think of knowledge as the full body of information — like a library — a collection of conversation narratives, spreadsheets, documents, marketplace reference materials, and similar. The workflow is refined, learnings are shared and the organization becomes smarter.
Embracing the project economy — everyone runs projects: Think of projects in two dimensions — (a) running the operations and (b) expanding the organization. Projects are running a series of defined steps to deliver a product. Hey, that’s part of our workflow definition. Business transformations — integrating systems, data, joint ventures, and similar. It is imperative that workers recognize and react to risks and issues; coordinate cross-functional team activities and most importantly, understand how their role (and project) deliver value to the organization and customer. Keeping an eye on the tactical, but aware of the purpose and benefit is the foundation for improvement. [01]
Remote work is here to stay: Business transformation and cloud-based software set the foundation for increased cross-functional team projects. Analytical and corporate performance management tools place data directly in the hands of the information consumer. Covid-19 drastically altered the economy and worker expectations and business productivity. The emergent challenge is enabling organization communications as workers may reside globally and across multiple time zones. More status meetings or more emails or more message chats are not the answer. The conversations must wrap around or integrate with the workflow. Asynchronous communication is the expectation.
Employees are People — Culture: Growing the organization means providing employees access to all the needed information to successfully onboard, meet their co-workers, and access the needed information to carry out their job. If remote work and asynchronous communications are the expected practice, then employees must have visibility into their goals and common organizational goals. Employees want to feel their work meaningfully contributes to the organization. Empowered people make for lasting employees.
Did you find the common theme?
It is people: building culture, self-organizing work, and async communications. Let me suggest Work OS tools embed the Deming model of process improvement (Plan — Do — Check — Act) in the company culture. [02]
Work OS vendors have overlooked the value their technology can deliver.
Work OS tools connect the interstitial organization space — connect people to people via knowledge and process. And this is where Work OS and strategy execution come together.
Consider this simple business organization model that illustrates the maturity and evolution of the organization as the business model matures. Each circle (using the Deming model) represents the organization and associated control and improvement process.
Initially, in Start-Up mode, the founders are experts in their service/product. They provide the hands-on labor and are the voice of the marketplace and entrance to capital markets. Their working relationship is highly collaborative.
In Growth Mode, founders take on more leadership activities. Capital investment grows the soft and hard asset base. The organization expands proportionally to investment. Founders are now leaders and must pass on knowledge, the secret sauce, to the growing organization. Processes are established and core systems implemented.
Scale Up mode, the organization expands exponentially as capital investment adds more soft and hard assets. The organization expands by specializing in functional departments, functional knowledge, and distribution of control. Systems and processes are vital for maintaining organizational effectiveness and efficiency.
At each layer, e.g., the Deming model, represents the continuous learning, testing, and adjusting that teams must do to achieve their stated strategic objectives. As the organization grows and then scales, it is imperative that knowledge and learnings are shared up/down and across the organization. Hard data sourced for example from ERP, CPM, or CRM systems is critical for informed, quantitative decision making, but it is the analysis and discussion across teams that provide the insight to adjust and align to the strategy. The data synthesis “plugs” the systems together to create learnings.
Each layer of the overall business model is a collection of employees running multiple workflows, communicating and creating institutional knowledge plus nurturing employee relationships.
As the business model matures and the organization hierarchy expands, the need for perspective (institutional knowledge), cross-functional collaboration, and analysis sharing become more vital and more challenging.
Work OS targets the Deming model’s Study and Act phases. The tools break down the barriers to organizational learning and improvement. The tools can accelerate sharing of what worked well and quickly disseminate revised playbooks to institutionalize process improvements.
The power of the Work OS is the ability to foster and enable a culture of continuous improvement. Work OS supports people to focus on their critical work, synthesizing data, and building a learning network with fellow employees. The outcome is a framework that supports successful strategy execution.
If you are interested in Work OS tools and how to leverage the technology in your organization, let’s talk.
References
[01] The Project Economy Has Arrived, by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, Harvard Business Review, November — December 2021
https://hbr.org/2021/11/the-project-economy-has-arrived
Retrieved on 4/14/2022
[02] WHAT IS THE PLAN-DO-CHECK-ACT (PDCA) CYCLE?https://asq.org/quality-resources/pdca-cycle
Retrieved on 4/14/2022
